Neuromarketing is one of those words that people keep bandying about as if you should know what it means. It sounds cool and impressive. And if you have a serious marketing budget it probably is. For most of us, however, it’s a little bit out of reach.

How so? Well, to do most neuromarketing you’ll need some pretty advanced machinery. If you’ve got serious dough you can start with an fMRI machine (frequent Magnetic Resonance Imaging). They’re the big machines they shove people inside of on medical dramas on TV. If that’s outside your budget, then you’ll want an EEG (electroencephalogram – it measures the electric patterns of the brain) or a vision tracking system (okay, that one actually does what it says).

And of course, with all those machines, you’ll need people to experiment on and people who can do those experiments, analyze the results and give you useful feedback. So if you’ve got a cool million lying around we can get started…

Lessons Already Learned

Fortunately, the best way to benefit from neuromarketing is to look at what other people have already discovered from this technique and then use those tricks in your own campaigns. For example:

• Fear of Missing Out. This isn’t just some term that millennials keep throwing around. It’s actually backed up by science. It turns out that if you frame your campaign as your customers gaining something or potentially losing something, the loss is much scarier.

And so, that can be an effective strategy to sell more. Just make sure you don’t scare your customers too much as that can have negative effects as well!

• Pricing. Before neuromarketing everybody thought that the right price for a product was $9.99 (or some multiple thereof). It turns out that is only good for logical and reasoned products.

This is because when we’re thinking about the complexity of a price, it makes us think the product is complex as well. On the other hand, with emotional purchases, it’s not as effective, as there it’s considered manipulative.

• Tyranny of Choice. Here’s an interesting one. Did you know that if you give people more choices of a certain product they’re less likely to actually buy any of them? This is, as the title suggests, the “tyranny of choice” and has been illustrated through neuroscience as the fear of regret. The more choices we have, the more likely there is some other choice that is almost as appealing and the more likely we’ll regret buying the current version.

About the Author

Nelma Lumme

Nelma Lumme is a freelance content writer. Originally from Finland, she now lives in Chicago, IL. Nelma studied sociology at the University of Tampere. She now helps people with career questions, providing useful tips for recruiters and employees through her articles. Follow Nelma on Twitter and Facebook.